She pulled Kitty into her arms and held her close. Kitty was shaking and her eyes stung. She was terrified and everything was horrible except for Verity. Verity was different. She was like a blanket drowning out all the terrible things in the world.
Very slowly, the noise died away until it was a faint crackle, and the record in Kitty’s head slowed and stopped skipping. She was still trembling, but her senses were returning to her.
“Bloody hell!” someone shouted from downstairs. “Were those gunshots?”
“Damn well were!” someone else replied.
“We have to get out of here,” Verity whispered.
She let go of Kitty and snatched up the pistol. Kitty didn’t want her to let go, but she didn’t fight. Verity was right. They had to escape. She clung to Verity’s hand as they crept to the edge of the landing and looked down. The guards from outside had returned to the house. Now they were swarming around in the foyer. Two of them were already making their way up the stairs.
“There!” one man shouted. “I see them!”
Verity grabbed Kitty and pushed her back as gunfire erupted from the staircase. Bullets flew past them, splintering the edge of the wall and spraying the air with plaster.
“Kitty, I’m going to do something very rash,” Verity said. “If I don’t make it, you have to reach the car and get back to headquarters, understood?”
“No, I’m not leavin’ you again!” Kitty insisted.
“There isn’t any choice, Kitty!” Verity cried.
Gunfire erupted from the foyer, and suddenly the men were shouting in confusion. Kitty winced, expecting them to spring on her and Verity any moment, but the attack never came. Instead, there was more gunfire from the foyer, and then a long silence.
Kitty looked at Verity, who looked back with equal confusion. In the silence, they heard Mrs. Singh shouting frantically.
“Kitty? Verity? Where are you?”
“Mrs. Singh?” Kitty gasped. She and Verity dashed to the landing and looked down. The men on the stairs were dead, and so were the ones in the foyer.
Cautiously, the two girls began descending the stairs. As they neared the lower landing, Kitty saw Mrs. Singh standing in the hallway, looking in all directions. She was dressed in black with her hair tucked under a cap to keep it out of the way. A Walther PPK pistol was in her hand, held at the ready with her finger beside the trigger. Agent Gregson was standing next to her, similarly dressed and holding a submachine gun against his shoulder.
“Mrs. Singh!” Kitty exclaimed.
Mrs. Singh and Gregson spun around at the noise and aimed their weapons. Recognizing the two girls, Mrs. Singh lowered her pistol, and Gregson just gave them a nod and went back to covering the hallway.
Kitty raced the rest of the way down the stairs with Verity close on her heels. Her heart was pounding still, but this time with excitement and relief. Mrs. Singh’s eyes were lit with fire and worry. She looked like a lioness prepared to destroy anyone and anything that got between her and her cubs.
“Thank goodness you’re here,” Verity gasped. “I don’t think we’d have lasted much longer.”
“We came as quickly as we could,” Mrs. Singh said.
“A lot bloody faster than you’re supposed to on the A12,” Gregson added.
Mrs. Singh ignored him, focusing on Kitty and Verity. “Is there anyone else in the house?”
Kitty counted the bodies, shuddered, and then shook her head. “Don’t think so, missis,” she answered. “There’s two more upstairs, and they’re not movin’ neither. ’Tween them and this lot, I’m pretty sure that’s everyone Lowell an’ Smythe left behind.”
“Gregson, do a sweep of the house to be sure,” Mrs. Singh said.
Gregson nodded and slipped off down the hallway.
“What about Lowell’s servants?” Mrs. Singh asked.
Kitty shrugged. She didn’t know.
Verity answered, “Given what we overheard, and the level of security we found here, I’m absolutely certain Lowell gave them the night off. The men were talking treason at the meeting. Something tells me Lowell isn’t foolish enough to trust even his butler with that kind of information, let alone the cook and the housemaids.”
Mrs. Singh nodded. “That makes sense. Now, you’d better tell me what’s going on here.”
“Better still,” Verity said, “we can show you.”
They led Mrs. Singh to the cellar and the secret room. On the way, Mrs. Singh stopped to check the kitchen and the other downstairs rooms for more of Lowell’s men, but everything was empty. It seemed that they were safe for the moment. The question was, how safe were they for the long term?
Once inside the hidden room, Mrs. Singh gave a whistle. “My word, this is something. When your report mentioned a hidden room, Verity, I assumed it would be a glorified cupboard. But this . . .”
“I know,” Verity agreed. “Everything about this mission is beyond what I had expected.”
Mrs. Singh looked at Kitty. “You said you saw a meeting attended by Smythe, Lowell, James MacIntyre, and . . .” She hesitated. “And the Old Man.”
“They was all sittin’ ’round the table,” Kitty said. “An’ I swear on me life it were ’im, missis. I don’t forget faces!”
She felt the need to reiterate that point, since she knew the claim was going to be dismissed as impossible.
“Calm down, Kitty, I’m not doubting you,” Mrs. Singh assured her. “Normally I would be skeptical, but given that Pryce never returned from his meeting with the Old Man today, I’m inclined to believe you. You said you had photographs?”
Kitty offered her the camera, hoping that the film inside hadn’t been damaged after its many mishaps.
Mrs. Singh took it and nodded. “Good. We’ll have these developed as soon as we get back to the Orchestra. In the meantime, let’s search the room to see if we can figure out what those bastards are up to.”
“They said somethin’ about MPs not comin’ in to work today,” Kitty ventured.
“Hmm.” Mrs. Singh frowned. “An assassination, maybe?”
“Masked gunmen in Parliament?” Verity suggested.
Mrs. Singh thought about it and shook her head. “You can’t take over the government just by shooting some MPs,” she said. “Enough would get away, and then you’d have a state of emergency on your hands. Even Smythe and Lowell aren’t stupid enough to do that, and certainly not the Old Man.”
The three of them scattered around the room and started searching through the files. The conspirators had taken a lot of the evidence with them, but they’d left behind a few lists and registers. There were names that didn’t mean anything to Kitty but piqued Mrs. Singh’s interest. Verity found a ledger of arms sales. Totaled up, it amounted to enough equipment to support a small army. There was also a financial list of some sort, with large sums of money listed alongside serial numbers of some kind. Bank accounts perhaps? Bribes?
Then, as Kitty opened another folder and started flipping through the photographs inside, her breath caught in her throat.
Some were snapshots of crates full of weapons and explosives; others showed those same crates being offloaded from ships and small smuggling boats. Kitty came to a photograph of Mr. Pryce, taken at the same location as one of the arms deals. It was the same place, but the background was very slightly different. The pictures had been taken on different days.
But why had Mr. Pryce been photographed at all?
“Mrs. Singh, look at this,” Kitty said.
Mrs. Singh and Verity both joined her.
Verity gasped at the photograph. “You don’t think Pryce is in on it too, do you?” She sounded very worried at the idea.
Mrs. Singh immediately shook her head. “I’ve known Pryce for almost twenty years,” she said flatly. “He would sooner die than turn traitor, and there is no way he would ever work with fascists. But this”—she waved the photograph in her hand—“is meant to make it look like he’s connected. They probably planted
someone to covertly take pictures when Pryce went to inspect the sites Debby found. That’s the Old Man’s work, obviously.”
Kitty shuffled through the rest of the photos. There were more pictures of Mr. Pryce, and a few of other members of the Orchestra, all adults and mostly agents from a working-class background. The photographs didn’t show anything actually incriminating, but taken alongside other pictures of clandestine meetings and smuggled weapons, they could be interpreted to suggest a connection.
At the bottom of the pile, she found a collection of notes. Skimming them told her everything.
“Oh God!” she exclaimed. “Missis, this is s’posed to be a report to MI5 from one of the Old Man’s agents. It says Mr. Pryce is in contact with . . . the Soviets? That can’t be possible!”
“What else does it say?” Mrs. Singh asked.
Kitty skimmed the rest and summarized. “There’s talk ’bout weapons bein’ smuggled in, an’ a plot to start a Communist uprisin’ among the factory workers an’ West Indians in London . . . an’ Liverpool, an’ Birmingham, an’ Manchester. It says Mr. Pryce’s network is really Communist spies. But that’s not true, is it? I don’t understand.”
Mrs. Singh scowled. “Oh, I understand,” she said. “They’re planning to stage a terrorist attack against Parliament, and then they’re going to blame it on Pryce and his ‘foreigners and socialists.’ If they can spark panic about an impending Red revolution, they can justify martial law across the country.”
“It’s diabolical,” Verity said, aghast.
“Question is,” said Mrs. Singh grimly, “how is the attack going to come?”
“I think I know,” Verity replied. She unrolled a long piece of drafting paper she had found. It was a blueprint of the Palace of Westminster. On the basement level, directly below the House of Commons, X’s had been drawn in thick pencil.
Kitty’s thoughts spun around for a moment and a series of terrible imaginings lined up. Parliament. Basement. Explosives. Missing MPs.
Gunmen might not be able to kill all of the government ministers at once, but a bomb in the basement could.
“They’re gonna bloody blow up Parliament!” she exclaimed.
Chapter 25
Gregson met them back in the foyer a few minutes later. Kitty was carrying an armful of documents, including the map of Parliament and the folder of observation materials about the Orchestra.
“The house is clear, ma’am,” Gregson told Mrs. Singh. “Find anything downstairs?”
“A buffet of evidence,” Mrs. Singh replied. “Smythe and Lowell are plotting to blow up Parliament, and stage a coup during the chaos.”
Gregson blinked a couple of times, trying not to look dumbstruck. Finally, he said, “What a bloody inconvenience, ma’am.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Mrs. Singh said. “We’re heading back to headquarters to get some more agents and deal with the conspiracy before it can cause any more trouble. Can you take care of this mess?” She motioned toward the bodies on the floor.
Kitty glanced at the bodies and flinched. She quickly looked away, feeling sick to her stomach. It was unsettling to hear Mrs. Singh speak of the corpses as just another detail to be managed. Of course, just a few minutes ago those same men had wanted to kill her and Verity, but their deaths were still horrible to contemplate.
Gregson nodded. “Not a problem, ma’am. I’ll call one of our MI5 contacts. Let them deal with it.”
“Is that safe? I would prefer not to have the girls dragged into this.”
“My lads know to keep their questions about our involvement to a minimum,” Gregson said.
“Good.” Mrs. Singh turned to Kitty and Verity. “Are any of your belongings still in the house?”
“No,” Verity answered. “Everything is at our hotel in Wolton-on-Sea. It’s a little town about an hour down the road. Do you think we should go back there? Resume our cover?”
Mrs. Singh pointed to the bruises across Verity’s face. “In your current state? No, better to make a clean break now before there are any awkward questions—and before Lowell rejoins his family, knowing who you are. Gregson, after you’re finished here, pop down to Wolton and retrieve their things. Take Verity’s car.”
“It’s parked behind some trees beyond the gate,” Verity said. She rummaged in her pocket and produced the car key for Gregson. “Rooms sixteen and eighteen at the Seaview Hotel.”
“Got it,” Gregson told her.
Verity frowned. “Just a moment.” She opened the drawer of a desk against the foyer wall and pulled out a pen and a piece of blank writing paper. “Dearest Diana,” she said aloud as she wrote the words, “I finally read the letter that came for me this morning. She’ll just think she wasn’t listening when I received it. Happens all the time with her. My mother has taken deathly ill, so I must go home. Going to drive through the night. I’ve taken Kate with me, as she is my responsibility and not yours. Didn’t want to wake you since it’s some godawful hour. See you next time in Monaco. Love and kisses, Vera.” She ended the letter with a little flourish of the pen. “There, that ought to assuage her.”
“You don’t think she’ll believe it, do you?” Kitty asked. It sounded like a very flimsy pretense.
“Could go either way,” Verity admitted, “but hopefully she’ll chalk up the timing to bad luck. She’ll be very distracted tomorrow anyway.” Verity folded the letter and passed it to Gregson. “Diana’s in room fifteen. Just slip it under the door while you’re there.”
“Not worried about leaving something with handwriting, Miss?” Gregson asked, as he tucked the letter into his pocket.
Verity grinned. “I always use a different hand for each cover. A bit to keep track of, but it’s fun!”
Mrs. Singh make a skeptical noise in her throat. “Hmm. Even so, I think you’d better retire Vera Cunningham for the foreseeable future.”
“A pity,” Verity mused. “I was really starting to like this hairstyle.”
Mrs. Singh check her watch. “Sun will be up soon. Gregson, we shall leave you to it. Come on, girls, we need to get back to London.”
Within minutes, Kitty was sitting in the back of Mrs. Singh’s car, staring out of the window as they sped through the countryside. The creeping light of dawn was just beginning to appear along the horizon. Kitty wanted to sleep, but she was too exhausted to manage it, so she just stared at the passing landscape and said nothing. In the front seat, Mrs. Singh and Verity were talking, planning. Kitty wasn’t paying attention to their words. Probably she should have been, since she was still a part of the operation, but it was all she could do to keep herself together.
Her mind kept cycling through everything that had happened, replaying all the worst parts of the night like a grotesque film reflected in the glass of the window. She thought about everything that she might have done wrong. She thought about everything new that could go wrong from here.
She thought about how she had shot a man. That kept cycling the most, finding its way into the middle of her other thoughts no matter how hard she tried to push it away. She was a murderer. She’d murdered someone. She was a spy. Spies murdered people. She was a murderer either way.
Stop it, Kitty! Stop thinking about that!
But she couldn’t stop. It just sat there in her head, overpowering everything else. This was who she was now: a person who spied, and lied, and killed. And it didn’t matter that she was spying, lying, and killing in the service of her country, to keep innocent people safe. Even in a good cause, she had to carry the weight of what she had done.
In the films, spies drank martinis, and shot people without remorse, and had a clever retort for every occasion.
Real life wasn’t like the films.
Automatically, Kitty’s fingertips were tapping each other, jumping from finger to finger in an endless sequence that was irregular the first few times through, and then repeated like a pattern. That relieved some of the pressure inside her mind. But it couldn’t fix everything.
Bloody hell, she needed a crossword, or a good scream, but neither of those was available at the moment.
She almost didn’t notice when they neared the city. It took her a few minutes even to register that the sun was coming up properly. She had lost most of the drive to her cyclical thoughts. That was fine, though. It had given her a chance to process. Her surface-level consciousness had gone blank, but her brain had kept working. It was sorting the problems out so that she could think about other things, important things, like the rest of the mission.
They reached London a little after sunup. Parliament didn’t sit for several hours, and Smythe surely wouldn’t blow it up before the ministers he wanted to kill were there, so that meant they had a little time. It meant they could properly plan their next course of action.
Kitty had snapped out of her trance by the time the car pulled up to the Orchestra’s headquarters. She stretched her neck and looked around. The muscles in her back and arms were sore from the fighting, and also from sitting for so long. As they pulled into the parking lot, Kitty felt a sense of unease come over her. Something was wrong.
She saw two men standing along the wall, smoking cigarettes while they guarded the entrance. The men had guns, both topped with silencers. Kitty didn’t recognize either of them, and she knew most of the faces in the Orchestra.
“Look out!” she shouted.
Mrs. Singh spotted the man and cursed. She spun the car around and hit the accelerator. The car lurched forward and rolled behind a large van that was parked to one side. It offered a little momentary cover, but that wouldn’t mean much.
“Out of the car and stay flat on the ground,” Mrs. Singh whispered.
Kitty did as she was ordered. She crawled onto the pavement and lay there, her heart pounding. She saw the two men approaching. They couldn’t see her from that angle, but she watched their boots as they got closer and closer. Verity dropped to the ground beside Kitty and put an arm over her protectively. It made Kitty feel a little safer, but she knew it wouldn’t matter once the men reached them.
The Secret Life of Kitty Granger Page 19
