Princess Elizabeth's Spy

by Susan Elia MacNeal

  “Yes, she was out riding with Lily that morning. If she’d been in front …”

  “The wee Princess?” Berners looked close to tears. “I didn’ know. That’s different. He shouldna have put the Princess’s life at risk. No, no,” he muttered, trying to sort out this new revelation.

  “So you did see something?”

  “The person … The person who did it knows somethin’ ’bout me,” Berners said. “Somethin’ bad. Real bad.” He looked down at his boots. “I don’ wanna lose my place here.”

  “Whatever it is, it can’t be as bad as a murder.”

  “Hunting, murder—we’re all righ’ savage when you think abou’ it.”

  “Your birds hunt for food. It’s natural. It’s the food chain, Darwin’s survival of the fittest. But whoever killed Lily was committing murder. There’s the difference. In many ways, your falcons are more civilized than people.”

  Berners considered, looking out over the vast lands of the castle. “Aye, lassie,” he said finally. “You’re right.” He took a breath. “He’s been poachin’ off the King’s land, he has. And since I saw what he did, he’s been givin’ me food. And I take it. I’ve jus’ been so hungry, Miss. So hungry …”

  “That’s all?” Maggie smiled, a wide smile. When Berners saw, he gave a nervous laugh.

  “Yes, Miss, that’s all. Canna stan’ that carrot mess no more.” He shrugged. “An’ that Lady Lily was no lady, that’s for sure. She a mean one. Oh, not to the other Lords and Ladies, but horrible to the servants. Didn’t think the world was any worse with her gone.” He scratched his head. “Didn’t think about the Princess being in danger, though.”

  “Mr. Berners,” Maggie pressed, “who set up the wire?”

  He looked up, eyes wild. “If I tell you what I know, I’ll get in trouble. Can’t afford to lose my job, Miss.”

  “Of course not,” Maggie said in soothing tones. “But you didn’t do anything.” She had an idea. “And he did. What if he decides to kill again? Maybe the Princesses won’t be so lucky.”

  “I don’t want to get into any trouble, Miss,” Berners said, voice breaking.

  “You didn’t do anything—you’re just a witness.”

  “I took ’is meat.”

  “But he was the one who did the poaching.” Maggie paused. “I’ve met Detective Wilson a few times. And he seems like a reasonable man. If you tell me who did it, I can tell him how helpful you were. And he might go easy on you. Mr. Berners, please tell me—who killed Lady Lily?”

  There was the loud sound of wings flapping and a rush of air. Berners stretched out his arm, and a falcon landed on his long leather glove, wings beating fast and hard until the bird folded them neatly. “What d’you think, Merlin,” Berners said. “You think I should tell the young miss?”

  Merlin cocked his head and angled one beady black eye at Maggie. “Scree! Scree!” he cried.

  “All right,” Berners said, giving a heavy sigh. “The man who put up the wire that killed Lady Lily was Mr. Tooke, Miss.”

  Mr. Tooke! The Head Gardener. He was the perpetrator?

  “Thank you, Mr. Berners,” Maggie said, trying to contain her shock. “And may I call Detective Wilson and tell him you’ll speak with him?”

  Another long pause, while Berners stroked the feathers at the back of Merlin’s neck.

  “I’ll talk to ’im, Miss,” he agreed finally. “Yea, I’ll talk to ’im.”

  Maggie went to the tidy red-brick police building. The older man with sandy hair recognized her and smiled. “Well, hello there!”

  “I’m here to see Detective Wilson,” Maggie said. “It’s urgent.”

  “He’s in a meeting, Miss.”

  “It’s something he’ll want to hear right away.”

  “Then come to his office, Miss.”

  Detective Wilson excused himself from his meeting, went to his office and listened to what Maggie had learned. Together, they drove back to the castle, where they went first to find Sam Berners on the roof, who told the detective the same story he’d told Maggie.

  Then they went to Mr. Tooke’s flat, where he confessed everything. He looked almost relieved when the detective said he was under arrest for the murder of Lily Howell, put handcuffs on him and led him to the car to take him to the station. As they drove away, Maggie felt sad. Sad for Mr. Tooke’s wife, sad for Mr. Tooke, sad for Lily. She remembered something she had typed once, for the P.M.: “Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.”

  Hats off, Mr. Churchill, Maggie thought grimly. You certainly have that one right.

  Back in her room, Maggie shivered. She used the loo, washed up, then changed into her flannel nightgown, adding socks and a cardigan. The fireplace was lit and she turned on the portable radiator in the bedroom, waiting for it to warm. In the meantime, she cleared the small table where she and Lilibet had been working.

  She picked up the book, the Grimm. Maggie sighed. It wasn’t Lilibet’s fault; it had been an accident. Still, it was one of the few things she owned that had belonged to her mother.…

  Maggie looked at the inscription. It was still there, the black ink now blurred and watery. However, that wasn’t what captured Maggie’s attention, as she flipped through the pages of the book. There were tiny, tiny holes in the pages. Holes too small to be seen with the naked eye but highlighted by the tea stains.

  Some sort of bugs? Moths? Maggie thought. Then she headed for bed, to battle yet another night of tears and insomnia and eventual bad dreams.

  The next day, Maggie received a package with her breakfast, a pair of leather skates in her size, sharpened and ready. She could interpret only that Hugh was going to meet her somewhere where they could ice-skate.

  “Audrey,” Maggie asked, “where do people skate around here?”

  “I think there’s a pond near Frogmore House, Miss,” Audrey replied.

  “Thank you,” Maggie said. She was happy—not because she would see Hugh, of course, but because she’d have a chance to vary her physical fitness routine.

  Stately white Frogmore House, a seventeenth-century royal country home, was a good walk south of the castle in the Home Park. Maggie had made it in plenty of time and was sitting on a rough wooden bench by the side of the pond, lacing up her skates, when she spotted Hugh, dressed in tweed trousers and a Barbour jacket, skating and playing tag with a few children. Their laughter, and the rough, scraping sound of blades on hard ice, floated up to the sky, which was leaden and threatened snow. The surrounding grass was a dull brown, and the trees that outlined the perimeter of the pond were now completely bare.

  Maggie stepped onto the ice and pushed off on one blade, her breath visible in the cold air. So long, Nevins.

  One of the children Hugh was playing with fell and cried out, startling a murder of crows pecking at the ground nearby, causing them to flap their iridescent blue-black wings and scream, “Caw! Caw!” into the wind. They settled back down to their pecking, as Hugh picked the child up and dusted her off, sending her on her way.

  As Maggie skated by and then turned backward, Hugh whistled. “Not bad, Sonja Henie.”

  “I learned at Wellesley,” Maggie said, circling around him, arms outstretched for balance. “Small town near Boston, where I grew up. Every winter we’d clear off Paramecium Pond at Wellesley College and skate.” She grinned. “However, I’m afraid that skating, plus limited self-defense from Camp Spook, are the only sports I can manage. Although I have been doing my exercises daily.”

  “From what I recall,” Hugh said, trying to catch up, “your self-defense skills are spot-on.”

  They glided together for a while, keeping pace with each other, away from the other skaters. The cold wind rushed past them, stirring the bare branches of the trees in the distance. “It’s good to see you again,” she said.

  “Good to see you too,” Hugh said. “Er, good to be back on
the case.”

  “Wish I could have been a fly on the wall,” Maggie said, turning backward again.

  Hugh laughed as he did forward crossovers. “Nevins was fit to be tied, and Frain was none too pleased. But I’m glad. Really glad. So, thanks.” Then, “How did it go?”

  “Well, except for having to hide under the desk when Gregory came in unexpectedly, fantastic. He didn’t see me, by the way.”

  “Good. And even if you had been found, I’m sure you could have talked your way out.”

  Maggie did a few three-turns, her knitted scarf flying behind her. “You were right about Lily, by the way. Fascist involvement from way back, trips to Germany with the Mitford girls, photographs with Hitler …”

  “And letters pleading with the King to cover it up, right?”

  “Exactly.”

  Hugh shook his head as he turned to go backward. He almost fell but then righted himself. “If you’re rich enough and your family has enough connections, you can make anything go away.”

  “By the way, I photographed Louisa’s file too, while I was there. Camera’s in my bag.”

  “Anything?”

  “No,” Maggie said, slowing down. She bit her lip. “But I just have a feeling that something’s not right there.”

  “Why? What specifically makes you feel that way?”

  “Well …” Maggie thought. “She’s arrogant. She’s mean. She owns a snake. A snake!”

  Hugh shrugged. “Doesn’t mean she’s guilty of anything, including colluding with Lily. If you suspect her of something, you need evidence.”

  “Frain told me to be a ‘sponge’—and I’ve absorbed a very bad feeling about her.”

  “Well, keep an eye on her.”

  “I will.”

  “You have any suspicions of anyone else?”

  Maggie thought about Audrey and how she’d just come from France. Then she shook her head. That’s ridiculous.

  They skated together in silence as the wind picked up velocity, blowing the large, lacy snowflakes sideways. Most of the children were cold and had left the pond. “Thanks for getting me back on the case, by the way,” Hugh told her.

  “Of course,” Maggie replied. “We’re a team.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Although great work solving Lady Lily’s murder there, solo.”

  “Sam Berners was the key. Berners was up on the parapet, watching his birds, when he saw Tooke string up the wire. Tooke realized that Berners had seen him, but blackmailed him—Berners had been holding back some of the pheasants and rabbits his falcons killed for himself as well as selling them on the black market—and Tooke threatened to expose him.”

  “Well, that takes care of that, then—but we still have no idea where Lily got that decrypt or whom she was going to give it to.”

  He tried another turn, as a falcon dove into the underbrush to ambush its prey, and nearly fell again. “Argh,” he said. “My concentration’s a little off today.”

  Maggie glided on one foot and lifted up her free leg in an arabesque, arms outstretched. She looked back at the castle. Sure enough, there on the rooftop was the large and unmistakably broad figure of Sam Berners. Rabbit stew tonight, Maggie thought. Thank you, falcons.

  “You seem agitated,” she said. “More than usual.”

  There was a long silence. “Broke up with the girlfriend. It was … awkward,” he said finally.

  There was another silence. “As it turns out, John—my, well, my almost-fiancé—is dead. ‘Missing, presumed dead’ as they say. But no one seems to have much hope after all this time.”

  “Oh,” said Hugh. He rubbed his gloved hands together for warmth. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Yes, thank you,” said Maggie. Then, “I need to go now—to prepare tomorrow’s maths lesson. We’re starting algebra, heaven help us.”

  They skated over to the benches on the perimeter of the pond and sat down, unlacing their skates. “Nevins mentioned, well, that he’d told you about the suspicions surrounding your father,” Hugh said. “I always put it down to idle gossip, personally, but you must have a lot of questions.” He gave a deep sigh. “I don’t know if you want it, but I ‘borrowed’ his file. It’s in my skate bag.”

  Maggie was stunned. “Thank you,” she managed. She took Hugh’s bag and hoisted it over her shoulder. He did the same with hers.

  “I hope you feel the same,” he said, “after you’ve read it.”

  In the bowels of U-246, in the cold waters of the North Sea, Gernot Schneider and Hermann Hoffman lay in their narrow racks, six-foot bunks affixed to the walls, one on top of the other. The air was close and rank, punctuated by snores from the other men.

  “I just don’t get it,” Schneider said on his back, making a steeple of his hands.

  “Shut the fuck up!” called another man, in another bunk, trying to sleep while he could.

  “Shut the fuck up, yourself!” Schneider snarled back. Then, to Hoffman, in a lower voice, “We’re on one of the most elite U-boats in the fleet. Kapitänleutnant Hackl has the Knight’s Cross, for God’s sake.”

  “Pinned on by der Führer himself,” Hoffman said.

  “So, why are we here?” Schneider said. “Why aren’t we seeing any action?”

  The man called out, “You want action? If you don’t shut up, I’ll give you action.”

  “I wouldn’t complain if I were you,” Hoffman whispered. “You just might jinx it. Besides, I have a fiancée to return to.”

  “Ach, Greta Kruger, with the big bottom, who makes the world’s best Apfelstrudel.” Schneider rolled his eyes in the dim light. “But I didn’t join the Kriegsmarine just to eat cabbage soup and smell my fellow sailors’ farts. I want to see battle!”

  “Commandant Hess has a plan for us, that I trust,” Hoffman said.

  “You’re right.” Schneider turned over and yanked his thin cover with him. “And when we finally learn what it is, I hope it’ll be big.”

  Maggie went to the library at Windsor to read her father’s MI-5 file. There, in a leather-tufted chair, under the fading gray light pouring in from the mullioned windows, she read.

  And read.

  And read.

  What she read was disturbing. Her father had been a spy during the Great War, when he was supposed to be just a professor at the London School of Economics. He lied to me about that, Maggie thought, hands clenching, still angry at his not asking about John, at being stood up in Slough. Lied to.

  But what was most disturbing was that some material was blacked out, specifically in regard to a certain agent, Neil Wright. And who are you, Agent Wright? What kind of relationship did you have with dear old Dad? Why would it be censored?

  Sir Owen clasped his hands behind his back and approached Maggie. “May I help you with anything, Miss Hope?” he asked.

  Maggie closed the file and put it away in her bag, so that he couldn’t see anything. “No, Sir Owen—thank you. Actually, I believe I have, well, almost everything I need right here.”

  The next day, Hugh was waiting in the back room of Boswell’s when Maggie arrived.

  “You all right?” Hugh asked, for Maggie was paler than usual and had deep circles under her eyes.

  “The King and Queen have planned a sleep-and-dine holiday—they’re calling it a Red, White, and Blue Christmas. Very patriotic.”

  “I know,” Hugh said, wrinkling his forehead. “A security nightmare.”

  “If Louisa—or anyone—is going to try anything, that would be the time to do it.”

  “We know. Everyone’s going to be on sharpest alert. Even I.”

  “You?”

  “I’ll be there. With Frain.”

  “Oh.” Maggie wasn’t sure how she felt about his being at Windsor Castle. “I see.” She shook her head. “I’ve read my father’s file. What do you know about Agent Neil Wright and the blacked-out material?”

  “The censored material sparked my curiosity, yes. I tried to get Agent Wright’s folder, but it’s gone
.”

  “Gone?”

  Hugh shrugged. “At least it’s not where someone as lowly as I can find it. All there remains are the basics—that he was born in Hampstead Heath in 1885, went to Christ Church at Oxford and graduated with honors in history in 1906, was recruited to MI-Five not long after.” Hugh took a breath. “Also, he was MI-Six, not MI-Five.”

  “MI-Six?” Maggie was confused. Like the CIA and the FBI, MI-6 dealt with foreign threats and MI-5 with domestic. “MI-Six wouldn’t be involved with my father unless …” Her mind grappled with the answer. “Unless they suspected him of being a double agent.”

  “That’s what I came up with too,” Hugh said.

  “And at that point in time, we were at war with Germany.… He might have been a German spy!”

  “But why would MI-Five keep him on, then? He must have been cleared.”

  There must be some way of finding out more.

  “I need to find out about Agent Wright.” Maggie, the scholar, knew where she had to start. “I’m going to the library.”

  “The library? There’s certainly not going to be anything on him there. Too public.”

  “Well, I have to start somewhere. Do something.”

  Later that afternoon, Maggie went back to the castle’s library. “Hello, Sir Owen. I’m looking for something today, actually,” she said.

  Sir Owen smiled and rubbed his hands together in glee, and Maggie realized he must be a little lonely among all the volumes sometimes. “Anything, Miss Hope.”

  “Well, I’m looking for information on a man named Neil Wright. He was born in Hampstead Heath in 1885 and graduated from Christ Church, Oxford, in 1906. I’m not sure what there will be, if anything.”

  “At least a birth notice,” Sir Owen said, “and marriage and death, if applicable. Let me see what I can do.”

  Maggie settled in to wait with a copy of Great Expectations. Sir Owen eventually returned, with two yellowing copies of The Times of London. “If you look here, Miss Hope,” he said, opening the first on the polished wood table, “you’ll find a birth notice—Neil Reginald Wright was born in London, to George Fletcher Wright and Nancy Grace Wright, on March twenty-first, 1885. However,” he said, opening the second, “this is the one you’ll probably be most interested in. I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to pry, but the names—”