As we watched them go, I asked Jeffrey, “How in the world did you know who he was?”
Jeffrey shrugged. “The American soldiers are always talking about Ike and his dog. I even know that the officer is Harry Butcher, his top aide. You could find out things too, if you came to visit. The soldiers don’t mind having us around. They’re friendly. I get chocolate bars every week.” Jeffrey lowered his voice. “You’d be welcome. You know that.”
I didn’t answer. We walked along in silence for a few minutes. Jeffrey spoke again. “Bertie, you need to visit them. You can’t keep avoiding your brother—or your mum.”
“Did someone tell you to say that?” I could hardly trust my voice.
“No, but it’s the truth. It’s been too long. You can’t keep hiding.” He sighed. “It’s not just about you, you know. You can’t blame yourself. No one else does.”
I shook my head. “That’s not true.”
“It is true, Bertie. Maybe it wasn’t always, not at first. But it is now. And Will’s much better. They’re keeping him busy with physical therapy and everything, but he’s got a tutor now and he’s trying to catch up. We study together a lot.”
I cut him off. “Let’s go home.” I grabbed LR’s lead and stomped ahead.
It wasn’t that I didn’t love my brother. Or that I didn’t miss Mum. But when I saw the scar on Will’s face, or watched him limping, trying to be brave about his missing arm, all I could think was: I did this. This is all my fault. I couldn’t tell Jeffrey that.
And I didn’t see how Will or Mum could forgive me. I couldn’t forgive myself.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A cipher is a method of converting a message into symbols…which have no meaning to a person not possessing the key.
—SOE Manual
MONDAY
“Mr. Bradshaw, are you with us?” Mr. Turner’s ruler came down hard on his desk and I jumped in my seat. “We’re all waiting for your answer.”
“I’m sorry, sir. Can you…can you repeat the question?” I glanced over at David, who was pretending to yawn while frantically trying to mouth an answer to help me out.
“What year was London founded and what was its original name?” Mr. Turner repeated. “Surely you learned this some years ago. But it was also in our reading this weekend.”
I tried to gather my thoughts. David was holding up five fingers. Five. “Oh, um, it was founded in AD 50 and its name was…um…”
Mr. Turner cleared his throat, cutting me off. “Perhaps, Mr. Goodman, since you seem so eager to participate, you can help your friend out.”
“The town was called Londinium, sir,” David answered slowly. His cheeks were flushed. He really hated being singled out—or getting anyone else in trouble. “It was founded on the bank of the Thames about seven years after the Romans invaded England.”
History was our last class of the day, and as we walked into the hallway, David touched my arm. “Sorry, Bertie. I only wanted to help you out. We should know better, I guess. Nothing gets by Mr. Turner.”
“That’s for sure. And I should’ve known that answer. I do know it. It’s just…”
“Bertie, you’ve been acting strange all day.”
“I’m just tired. There were two raids this weekend.” As we walked down the hall, a boy jostled David’s shoulder. Automatically, I glanced up to see who it was.
“It’s fine, Bertie. He didn’t do it on purpose,” David said. “You don’t have to fight my battles.”
“I know.” I bit my lip. David didn’t like to talk about it. But I knew it still happened. A whispered word; an “accidental” elbow dig in the ribs.
It was always done in a sneaky way, always out of the sight of teachers, especially Mr. Turner, who’d made his position crystal clear on the first day. “There will be no bullying or anti-Semitic behavior of any sort in this class,” he’d declared. “As Winston Churchill has said, we are waging war ‘against a monstrous tyranny.’ Our countrymen are dying for this cause. It is up to us to honor that sacrifice.”
David had stopped to reach into his knapsack. He handed me a book. “Here, I brought that Sherlock Holmes story. Do you want to come to my house now and read it? I can show you what I know about ciphers.”
“Not today. Sorry. I…I have to go to the command post.” I stuffed the book into my knapsack, checking again to be sure the small red notebook was tucked safely at the bottom.
Straightening up, I caught sight of a worried look on my best friend’s face. Besides Will, David was the bravest kid I knew. If I could tell him about Violette’s notebook, I knew he’d want to help. I needed his help.
But I’d made a promise to Eleanor.
* * *
—
Eleanor was waiting for me outside the command post on Maddox Street. “Where’s Little Roo? I thought you’d bring her. Is her paw all right?”
“She’s fine,” I said. “I came straight from school. I can’t exactly take her there.”
Eleanor’s face fell. “Oh, I brought her an extra doughnut. But you can take it home with you.”
Inside, Warden Hawk greeted us and I introduced Eleanor. “Uh, Warden Ita said we could use the meeting room this afternoon to do some homework.”
“Fine with me,” Warden Hawk said. “Glad to see you’re taking an interest in school again, Bertie. Now I’m headed out to join Warden Ita at a meeting about these new raids.” He beckoned to a young woman who looked to be in her late teens. “Kids, this is Deputy Warden Esther. She’s here to finish her training.” He winked. “She wants to learn from the best.”
Deputy Warden Esther laughed. “And, of course, the most modest.”
Eleanor stepped forward to shake hands. “I’m so pleased to meet you. Will you be working in this post from now on?”
“No, I’ll go back to the East End, where I live. It was hard hit in the Blitz, as you probably know. I want to do as much as I can for my community,” Warden Esther said. “I was about to make tea. Would you like a cuppa?”
“Thank you,” Eleanor and I replied together. I just hoped those “best” wardens hadn’t told Warden Esther about my disastrous first raid on Friday night.
“What is it with you and shaking hands with everyone?” I mumbled after Warden Esther had brought us two steaming mugs and closed the meeting room door behind her. “You’re worse than my cousin Jeffrey. He was here yesterday, showing off and chatting away all polite like to some American officer we met. The supreme commander’s aide or something.”
Eleanor bent down to reach into her knapsack. Her voice was muffled. “I guess I’m just used to being with adults. My father’s taken me everywhere with him, though he didn’t want to bring me here. I’m actually not really supposed to be in London, but I begged him not to send me to boarding school.”
I fell silent. I wanted to ask about her mother, but I didn’t want to pry. And I didn’t want to answer any questions about my mum.
Eleanor placed a pencil case and a stack of paper on the table before her. She opened the pencil case, took out a pencil, and twirled it thoughtfully between her fingers. At last she spoke again.
“My parents have been divorced for a long time. I don’t see my mother often. But since Nan—my father’s mother—is from London, Father let me come with him. Even so, he lives in a separate part of Nan’s home. It’s like a little apartment. And I live with Nan in the other part.”
“Why’s that?”
“Something to do with security…because of Father’s job in the war. I guess people who study literature are good at information analysis. That’s why he got recruited.”
“Analysis?”
Eleanor shrugged. “I think he tries to figure out what the Germans are doing and then hides our plans. It’s very secret. Father says some of the men he works with at the OSS haven’t even told
their wives back in the States what they do.”
Wives. In a flash, I remembered Saturday afternoon, when the man had come out of the office on Baker Street and been startled to find his wife and big black dog standing there. His wife had seemed taken aback to see him too.
“Eleanor, do you remember Violette ever talking to your father about what he does in the war?” I asked.
“No, Violette barely spoke to Father, and he seemed as surprised as I was when she left so suddenly, though I suppose he could have been acting.”
“Did she ever mention knowing a soldier, or someone who might have been involved in the resistance?” I asked.
“No. Violette did have a boyfriend, though. She called him Jay and said that he was very handsome and that they went dancing. But that’s all.” Eleanor took another pencil from her case and pushed it toward me. “She was a private person. Or maybe we weren’t as good friends as I thought,” she added. “Maybe she just thought of me as her young student.”
Or maybe, I thought to myself, Violette simply hadn’t been allowed to say anything to anyone. But Violette had violated the code of secrecy in one way—by keeping a notebook. And maybe some of the answers were in it.
Eleanor met my gaze. “I’m all ready. Do you have it?”
I nodded, reaching into my knapsack and placing the notebook between us. Eleanor stared at it for a moment, touching it with one finger, almost as if she didn’t believe it was real.
I reached over and opened it. “These first pages are notes Violette took from her training lectures. She learned about surveillance and sabotage and living undercover. There’s also a whole section about what to do with your parachute.”
“Parachute? That’s how people are sent to other countries?”
I nodded and found the page. Then I read aloud:
Today we learned about parachutes. After I land, I must hide the parachute. I can weigh it down with stones and drop it into a lake or river—or I can bury it. But I must do that at night. And try not to get muddy and dirty.
Our instructor even gave us the dimensions the hole should be, if a parachute must be buried: two feet long by two feet wide by two feet and six inches deep. I should cover it as naturally as possible with leaves and sticks. It’s important to remember to clean my shoes afterward. He didn’t say what to do with the spade. I’ll ask about that tomorrow.
Eleanor let out a big breath. “I can hardly believe it. It’s hard to imagine Violette jumping out of the sky. She’s so elegant. She loved to tell Nan and me stories about getting all dressed up to go dancing. Nan said I should be more like Violette, since half the time my hair is snarly and I’ve got mud on my dress. Did she really parachute into France, Bertie?”
“Yes, I think she did.” I flipped through to the last section. “Maybe that’s when she started to use a secret code—once she was there, working for the French resistance.”
“Let’s start right in,” Eleanor said, peering at the confusing string of letters. “Actually, I think technically this is called a cipher. I asked my father last night, and he said that even though people sometimes use the words code and cipher to refer to the same thing, there’s actually a difference between the two.”
“What do you mean?”
Eleanor settled on a page and pointed. “Well, see these letters? They’re jumbled and don’t make sense. You can tell right away they contain a secret message. That means this is a cipher. If it’s a substitution cipher, one letter is substituted for another to make a new alphabet. There are other kinds too.”
“How is a code different?”
Eleanor bit the end of her pencil. “Father admitted he isn’t a real expert. But he did say that with a code, the words and letters make sense on the surface. But they have a hidden meaning you can’t figure out unless you have the key to unlock the code.”
I frowned. “I’m not sure I get it.”
“Well, suppose you and I have an agreement that every time we write, The dog is lost, what we really mean is: I’m in danger. Or if I wrote you a note that said, Let’s read some Sherlock Holmes at the library, you and I would have decided in advance that what that really means is: Let’s meet at the command post to work on the notebook.”
“So, in that case, Sherlock Holmes stands for the notebook and library stands for the command post?”
“Exactly. But we can see that’s not what Violette did here. These strings of letters don’t make real words. So Violette was using some sort of cipher system.”
“How do we figure out how to read her cipher alphabet?” I asked.
Eleanor shrugged. “That’s about as much as I know, Bertie. Maybe we just guess.”
“Seems like this could take a long time. And we have just a few days.” I thought of David. If David was here, he’d probably have some ideas.
“We have to at least try,” Eleanor said. She opened the notebook to the first page of code. “Let’s start here.”
We hunched over the letters. I wasn’t even sure how to start. I could see Eleanor making scribbles. “Got it?”
“No!” she said. “Shh. Stop talking and concentrate.”
We were silent for a while. I tried to make sense of the random letters. Nothing worked.
“I wish there were spaces between some of the letters, like with real words,” I complained. “Nothing I try seems to work.”
“There’s got to be a better way to go about this,” Eleanor agreed, tossing her pencil down. “We’re wasting time. This could take us weeks!”
“I might have an idea,” I suggested. I pulled David’s book from my knapsack.
Eleanor read the title aloud. “The Return of Sherlock Holmes. What’s that got to do with this?”
“My friend David gave me this book. There’s a story in it about ciphers, but…but that’s not the whole point.” I took a breath. “What I’m trying to say is that I think we should ask David to join us. He likes reading about codes and ciphers, and he’s a big fan of Sherlock Holmes. He might have some ideas about how to go about it.”
“But…but that means telling someone else about Violette,” said Eleanor uncertainly.
“I know. But if we want to solve this by Thursday, then…”
“All right. But he has to keep everything about this secret.” Eleanor paused. “Do you trust him?”
“Yes, I trust him,” I told her. “David’s my friend, and that’s what friends do.”
Violette
To the question why people with so little training were sent to do such important work, the only reply is: the work had to be done, and there was no one else to send.
—Rita Kramer, SOE historian
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
You should always be on the alert to notice strangers hanging about, especially when you are leaving any house.
—SOE Manual
TUESDAY
“Eleanor, this is David.” We stood outside the Heywood Hill bookshop on Curzon Street. Eleanor and I had agreed to meet there since we couldn’t use the command post that afternoon.
Eleanor, as expected, reached out to shake David’s hand. “Bertie says you’re a Holmes expert and you know about ciphers and he’s your friend. So I trust you.”
“Uh…uh, thanks,” David mumbled, ducking his head a little so that a lock of shiny dark hair fell over his eyes. He brushed it aside. “Nice to meet you too. I haven’t met many Americans before. But I like to read Edgar Allan Poe stories.”
An elderly man with a cane was coming out of the bookshop, followed by a younger woman. David was closest and sprang forward to open the door. “Watch your step, sir.”
Suddenly I recognized the man. “Oh, you own the clock shop on Brook Street! I love looking at the antique watches in your window.”
“With a name like Humphrey, it seemed like fate that I should open it, d
on’t you think?” The old man grinned.
I had no idea what he meant but tried to smile politely anyhow.
“My daughter here keeps pestering me to retire, but I’m stubborn,” he went on. “And I like to work.”
“My foster grandfather does too,” David put in softly. “He left Russia because of…because of the pogroms. He started a shoe shop on Berwick Street and still goes in almost every day.”
David had told me he felt lucky to be living with the Rosen family. Some of the children who left Germany on trains like David did had been sent to stay in boarding schools or with Christian families. That made it hard to practice their Jewish faith.
“I imagine you help in the shop a lot,” said Mr. Humphrey solemnly. He glanced at me and lifted his cane to point at my civil defense badge. “And I see you’re a volunteer.”
At least today I’d remembered to wear it. I needed to report to the command post for an early evening shift. I even had my helmet and torch in my school knapsack. “I’m an air-raid messenger for the civil defense.” I gestured toward Eleanor. “And Eleanor here is from America. She volunteers for the PDSA—the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals.”
“Now, did you hear that, Lydia?” The man turned to the young woman behind him and chuckled. “America is sending us young girls to help protect the nation. I, for one, shall sleep much more soundly tonight.”
“I also know your shop, sir,” Eleanor piped up. “And I can guess why you named it Master Humphrey’s Clock Shop.”
Of course, Eleanor would know.
“Charles Dickens wrote and published a journal called Master Humphrey’s Clock. My father and I were walking by once and he told me,” she said. “He’s here working for the war now but at home he teaches British literature.”
Mr. Humphrey chortled with laughter. “What would we do without the Americans? They love our English authors as much as we do. And now we really can’t do without the Americans.” He leaned forward, adding in a conspiratorial whisper, “With Eisenhower at the helm, the invasion of France is just a matter of time. When and where will it be? That’s what everyone wants to know.”
How I Became a Spy Page 8
