Peril in Paris (Taylor and Rose Secret Agents)

by Katherine Woodfine

  But as she hopped down from the cab outside the Inns of Court, she acknowledged to herself that even with the support of her friends, life wasn’t always entirely straightforward. Despite the success of Taylor & Rose, there were still plenty of people who did not care for the idea of young ladies being detectives. And running the agency was jolly hard work, especially without her best friend and business partner at her side.

  Nothing seemed quite right without Lil. Certainly nothing was anywhere near as much fun.

  Almost as though he had read her thoughts, Joe leaned out of the cab window and asked: ‘Reckon you can find out how she’s getting on?’

  Sophie smiled up at him. She knew that he missed Lil too. ‘I’ll ask,’ she promised. ‘I might be a while – shall I meet you back at the office later?’ He nodded and she gave him a quick wave goodbye, before she turned and went under the archway and inside.

  In the cool, echoing hallway, the sleepy concierge was sitting exactly as usual behind his desk. ‘Mr Clarke, is it, miss?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes please.’

  ‘Second floor and to the right,’ he instructed, exactly as if he hadn’t seen her here at least once a week for the last six months.

  Following his instructions, Sophie made her way up the stairs. At the top was a door marked with a small printed card that read simply: CLARKE & SONS SHIPPING AGENTS. She knocked, and when a voice inside called out: ‘Come in!’ she stepped inside the headquarters of the Secret Service Bureau.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Secret Service Bureau HQ, London

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ said a sardonic voice.

  Captain Carruthers was lounging in his chair, his shirt collar slightly open, his feet resting on the desk beside the typewriter, as he flipped through a stack of reports. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’m here to see the Chief,’ Sophie said shortly. She usually thought of herself as rather a polite person, but Captain Carruthers was always so rude that it was difficult to be anything but rude back.

  ‘Oh, well then, go through – you know where he is,’ said Carruthers, waving her away without bothering to look up from his papers.

  Swallowing down her annoyance, Sophie crossed the room to the door that led to C’s office.

  ‘C’ was a code-name, of course. She didn’t know what it stood for – perhaps C for Chief, as they often called him, or C for Commander, or even C for Clarke the Shipping Agent, though that seemed unlikely. Lil sometimes joked: ‘I say, I wonder what happened to A and B?’ but Sophie had noticed she never said it to his face. Even Lil was rather in awe of C.

  Now, as Sophie always did when she stepped into C’s office, she found herself looking around, thinking of all the secret business that must take place here. Not that there was anything especially mysterious or clandestine about the room itself – in many ways, it looked exactly like the ordinary shipping agent’s office it pretended to be. There was a big desk, stacked all over with piles of papers; a map of the world, dotted with pins; and a big bookcase crammed with fat leather-bound books. At the centre of it all was C himself, busily writing letters in his characteristic green-ink scrawl. To all intents and purposes, he too could have been a perfectly ordinary shipping agent. He looked like any affable older gentleman, with a gold watch chain and the traces of what Sophie suspected was his breakfast boiled egg on his shirt front.

  The only thing that was unusual about C’s office was that there was a very large wind-up gramophone playing on a table in the corner, and C was humming along to the melody as he worked. Sophie knew very little about C, besides the fact that he ate soft-boiled eggs for breakfast, but she did know he had a passion for music. She had grown accustomed to having a musical accompaniment to their meetings. Today, she noted, it was Mozart’s Magic Flute Overture that could be heard drifting from the gramophone.

  ‘Ah, Miss Taylor! Delightful to see you. Well, well, and what have we here?’ C rubbed his palms together in anticipation, as Sophie placed the box on the desk in front of him. ‘Oh, splendid!’ he said to himself as he lifted the lid, pulling away the brown paper with the air of a child with a birthday present. ‘Aha! Code books … Signalling manual … Ah, yes, this one does look rather important … Carruthers!’ he called out in a louder voice.

  After a moment’s pause, his assistant slouched in. He looked as surly as always, although C didn’t seem to notice. ‘Take these and check through them for me, there’s a good fellow, and telephone through to Admiral Stevens and let him know we have them. I rather think he might be worried about what’s become of them. Excellent work, Miss Taylor!’

  Carruthers accepted the parcel without saying anything, tossing Sophie a bad-tempered glance as he strode back out of the room.

  ‘Now, tell me, who was Ziegler’s agent this time? The fellow calling himself Dr Muller, was he one of our old friends?’

  Sophie shook her head. ‘I’ve not come across him before.’ She described the thin grey man, whilst C scribbled a few notes on the back of an envelope. ‘He wasn’t at all happy to have lost the parcel,’ she finished up.

  ‘I’m sure he wasn’t,’ said C, with a chuckle. ‘Well, I daresay we’ll meet him again before long. Now, I have a new assignment for you. Not parcels this time, but something rather different, which I think you may find interesting.’

  He pushed a folder across the desk towards her, printed with the name PROFESSOR BLAXLAND in large black letters. Flipping it open, she saw several densely typed sheets of paper: lying on top was a photograph of a handsome, well-dressed, middle-aged man. Scribbled beneath the photograph were the words SSB AGENT.

  ‘This man works for the Bureau?’ she asked, picking up the photograph to look at it more closely.

  ‘Yes, in a way. Not in the same capacity as you, Miss Taylor, but as what you might perhaps term a consultant. Professor Blaxland had a specific area of expertise that was very useful to us. He was a language specialist, teaching at the Sorbonne in Paris, with a particular interest in codes and ciphers.’

  Sophie looked up from the picture. ‘Was ?’

  ‘I am sorry to say that two days ago, Professor Blaxland was murdered.’ The Chief ’s plump, good-natured face looked sombre as he went on: ‘He was shot in his apartment, in the fifth arrondissement of Paris. It appears to have been a burglary gone wrong – his apartment had been broken into and the intruders were going through his possessions, when he returned and surprised them. The thieves shot him and escaped. However …’ C fell silent for a moment, leaving a heavy pause hanging in the air before he continued: ‘My fear is that Blaxland may have been deliberately targeted, and the murder set up to appear like a burglary.’

  ‘But who would do that, and why?’ asked Sophie.

  ‘That is exactly what I want you to find out. I am sending you to Paris, Miss Taylor. You leave on tomorrow morning’s boat-train.’

  Sophie stared at him, taken aback. Paris? Following suspects; intercepting parcels; trailing Ziegler’s spies through the London streets she knew – she could do all that quite easily. But investigating a murder in an unknown foreign city was something else altogether. Why would the Chief send her on an assignment like that when he had plenty of more experienced and well-travelled detectives working for him – tough former Scotland Yard men, and seasoned private investigators like her friend Mr McDermott?

  But C answered her question before she had chance to ask it: ‘You’ll be going undercover, of course, as Miss Celia Blaxland, the Professor’s niece.’ He pushed another folder across the desk towards her and opened it, tapping the photograph that lay on top. Sophie leaned forward to see a portrait of a fair-haired girl of about eighteen years old. ‘As you’ll see from the dossier, she is rather a wealthy young lady. She hasn’t seen her uncle for several years, but she is his only close living relative, so the authorities will not be at all surprised to see her – or, that is to say, to see you. I’d suggest you begin by meeting with his solicitor to find out as much as you can about what happened. It
would also be worth talking to his friends and colleagues at the Sorbonne.’

  Sophie looked from the Chief, to the photograph, and back again. She had so many questions it was difficult to know where to start. ‘But why the need to send someone undercover?’ she asked at last. ‘Couldn’t the French authorities investigate through official channels?’

  C tapped his pen thoughtfully against the desk in time to the music. ‘Blaxland worked for us on the quiet, and I’d rather we kept it that way. I’d prefer our investigation to go unnoticed by either the French or the German authorities, and by the newspapers too, for that matter. With that in mind, you’ll need to be discreet, Miss Taylor. Stay on your guard and, whatever you do, don’t reveal who you really are.’

  ‘What about the real Miss Blaxland, won’t she turn up and give the game away?’

  C shook his head. ‘We’ll take care of that. What I need you to do is to find out what happened to Blaxland. Did someone deliberately orchestrate his death, and if so who and why? Of course, my suspicions may be quite misplaced. It’s perfectly possible that Blaxland’s death was no more than the unfortunate consequence of an ordinary robbery – in which case, your job will be a straightforward one. But Blaxland was an unusual man with remarkable skills, engaged in top-secret work for our government. There is a clear possibility that his death may be the work of our enemies.’ For a moment there was silence but for the crackly sound of the music coming from the gramophone – the singing of the strings and the silvery notes of the flute – then the Chief continued: ‘I won’t mince words with you, Miss Taylor. This could be a matter of national security. If you do find evidence that Blaxland was murdered by our enemies, you will likely be in danger yourself. In that event, you must leave Paris and return to London at once and report to me, do you understand?’

  Sophie nodded, and C went on: ‘Familiarise yourself with the contents of these folders. They include your instructions, and all the information you’ll need. Your train leaves from Victoria first thing tomorrow morning.’

  The overture came to an end with three long notes, and Sophie realised she was being dismissed. She hastily scooped up the two folders, as he added:

  ‘Oh, one last thing. Miss Blaxland of course travels with a chaperone – normally, I believe, she has a lady’s maid to accompany her. You’ll need to arrange for someone to go with you in that capacity. I’m sure one of your quick-witted young ladies will do the job. Well, very best of luck. Farewell, or I suppose I ought to say au revoir.’

  He smiled and turned away to fiddle with the gramophone, but Sophie paused at the door. She was still trying to make sense of all that C had told her, but in spite of that, she had to ask: ‘I … I don’t suppose there’s any news of Lil?’

  She knew she wasn’t really supposed to ask. When they’d first agreed to work for the Bureau, they’d been told that their work would be top secret; and Lil’s current assignment was especially confidential. Even Sophie hadn’t been allowed to know where Lil was going or what she was doing. All she had been told was that Lil would be away for some weeks – perhaps months – and that she would have no way of keeping in touch. Sophie had sometimes imagined her sleeping in a tent in a desert; trekking through wild jungles; or even sunning herself on the deck of a steam-boat on a faraway ocean. Now she added, feeling rather foolish: ‘I just wondered if she was all right.’

  C shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything.’ Her impatience must have showed on her face because he added more gently: ‘Not because I won’t, but because I can’t. I haven’t heard anything from her for a little while, you see. It’s not always easy for her to get reports through. Though last time I did hear from her, she was perfectly well and in high spirits as usual. Your friend is a very courageous young woman.’ He nodded her a brisk goodbye: ‘Bon voyage, Miss Taylor. Good hunting.’

  Carruthers was typing very fast and very loudly when Sophie closed the office door behind her.

  ‘So we’re off to Paris, are we? How nice.’

  ‘It’s not a holiday,’ said Sophie tightly, wishing Carruthers didn’t always succeed in irritating her. ‘It’s an assignment.’

  ‘Oh, I know all about it.  Someone has to prepare all those reports and dossiers, you know. Though I must admit I couldn’t quite believe it when I heard they were sending you undercover as Celia Blaxland.’ He snorted sarcastically. ‘Good luck!’

  ‘The Chief seemed to think I’d manage perfectly well. Good morning to you, Captain,’ and before he could say anything else, she swept out of the room.

  She didn’t have time for Carruthers now. Her mind was whirling, and she knew she had to gather herself. She had a lot to do if she was to be on a train to Paris first thing tomorrow morning.

  Paris! It was a daunting thought, but there was a spark of excitement too. Her mind darted at once to thoughts of artists and writers, the sumptuous outfits created by designer César Chevalier, grand boulevards, splendid architecture, delicious food … She’d never travelled abroad before, although she knew that her parents had been all over the world. Paris made her think especially of her mother, who had spent time there as a young girl: Sophie had read all about it in her mother’s old diaries, which she had inherited. She thought it would be rather wonderful to follow in her mother’s footsteps, although of course she wouldn’t have much time for sight-seeing. As she had told Carruthers, this would be no holiday: she had a murder to investigate.

  The thought of that made her feel suddenly tight with nerves. She knew she was a good detective, but she’d never taken on a case like this before. If only Lil were here, she’d have made the assignment seem fun and exciting – an adventure in a foreign city. Lil was an actress, and the idea of going undercover in some extraordinary role never daunted her in the slightest. But now Lil was miles away – who-knew-where – and Sophie would have to manage this by herself.

  For a moment, she saw Carruthers’ sneering face again, and then heard the Chief say: ‘Your friend is a very courageous young woman.’ Was the implication that she herself was not? But surely that wasn’t fair: her mind flashed at once through scenes of underground passageways and rooftops and standing in an empty office, face to face with the Baron himself. But that had been different, she realised. Then she’d always had Lil by her side.

  As she came out into the street and flagged down a cab, she told herself she was being silly. There was no reason at all that she couldn’t handle this just as well as anyone else. She oughtn’t to let Carruthers rattle her; the Chief had faith in her, or he wouldn’t have given her the job.

  ‘Sinclair’s department store, please,’ she said to the cab driver as she clambered inside.

  ‘Off to do a spot of shopping, miss? And very nice too.’

  Sophie didn’t bother to correct him. She was fairly certain that the cab driver wouldn’t believe her if she explained that she wasn’t going shopping at all, but that in fact the young girl with the blue parasol was the coproprietor of Taylor & Rose detective agency, and even now making arrangements to embark on a secret undercover mission.

  A secret undercover mission! Well, there was no turning back now, she thought. She’d told the Chief she would do it, and after all, it was hardly likely that there were any other young ladies working for the Secret Service Bureau who could go undercover as Celia Blaxland.

  Besides, it was not as though she’d be entirely alone, Sophie reminded herself. The Chief had said that Miss Blaxland was always accompanied by a lady’s maid. Before she did anything else, she should make sure that she would be too, and luckily she knew exactly the person she wanted to help her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Taylor & Rose Detective Agency Sinclair’s Department Store, London

  ‘No. No chance whatsoever. Absolutely not,’ declared Tilly at once. ‘Look around you! I’m far too busy!’

  Sophie obediently glanced around Tilly’s workshop, though in fact, calling it a ‘workshop’ made it sound a good deal grander than it actua
lly was. In reality, the little office that Tilly had claimed at Taylor & Rose was scarcely bigger than a large cupboard. But Tilly had been adamant that she must have a place of her own to work, no matter how small it might be. She was a student at University College London, and had a passion for all things mechanical and scientific. When she wasn’t studying, she provided Taylor & Rose with a good deal of technical help with everything from developing photographs to testing for fingerprints. She had even invented several useful and unusual devices to help them in their detective work.

  Tilly was presently taking a course in chemistry, which went some way to explaining why the table in front of her was covered with a jumble of glass bottles, jars and test tubes. Behind her, shelves were crammed with thick books, stacks of papers and a framed photograph of Madame Curie, the French scientist who was Tilly’s greatest hero. In the midst of all this was Tilly herself – a tall, brown-skinned girl with a lot of curly black hair. She was wearing a large apron over her frock, and what looked like a pair of old motoring goggles on her head, and her hands were placed firmly on her hips.

  ‘I’ve got an examination in two weeks. I can’t just go haring off to Paris at the drop of a hat to be a lady’s maid !’ she insisted.

  ‘I know it’s rather a lot to ask. But this assignment is for the Secret Service Bureau. It’s jolly important – the Chief said it could be a matter of national security.’

  ‘Surely one of the others could go instead?’

  ‘But no one else would be nearly as good at this assignment as you. Miss Blaxland is a terribly wealthy young lady. You know exactly what someone like her would be like – you could help me to impersonate her. And you know you’d be able to play the role of her lady’s maid to perfection.’ It was true – though Tilly was now a London student, it was not long since she’d been working as a maid in a grand country house. What was more, Sophie knew that she was practical, sensible and extremely clever – exactly the person she needed to help her solve this case. ‘If you can’t come, I suppose I’ll have to ask one of the others. But I do wish you would come with me. It’s a very important assignment, and I’d really value your help.’