by Alan Hardy
THE NAZI SPY
NAZI SPY MYSTERY SERIES BOOK 1
ALAN HARDY
Copyright © 2019 Alan Hardy
All rights reserved.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
FURTHER BOOKS BY ALAN HARDY
1
Scotland, 1941
Fiona had three tasks ahead of her.
The first task was to find out who had been writing letters to her. Letters which had been, at times, of a very intimate nature.
The letters claimed to be from her husband, but they could not possibly be from him.
Because, you see, he was dead.
Or, at least, he had been dead when the last few letters were written.
The second task was to find out who had killed her husband.
And the third task concerned another suspicion which kept nagging at her. She suspected there was a spy close by. She would have to find out who it was.
It would probably prove to be the most dangerous task of all. In the sense that she might have to be prepared to kill, in order not to be killed herself.
It wasn’t going to be easy.
It didn’t necessarily mean all three tasks would involve unmasking one and the same person. Common sense dictated it might well be, but it could equally turn out that she would end up unmasking two people, or even three.
She wished she were a bit brighter, or that she had had a bit more experience of life. But then she had to play the game with the cards she’d been dealt.
Mind you, if loyalty, decency and pluck were all that was required, then she would manage.
She glanced at herself in the mirror.
Was she up to it?
She was of slightly above-average height, slim and demure, so people always said. Auburn hair, as now, usually done up in a bun. Sort of greenish eyes. A bit of a pointed, narrow face, she admitted with a sigh, not wide and expressive like those flamboyant Hollywood actresses such as Katherine Hepburn and Claudette Colbert. Not that she would ever wish to be compared to such women. She wanted to be the sort of woman who was respected by all and sundry. Proper and decent. An English rose, if just ever so slightly faded.
She was thirty-seven, after all.
Married for thirteen unhappy years. No children. An issue—or rather a lack of issue—of great disappointment. She was a terrific aunt to her nephews and nieces—everybody said so—but it wasn’t the same, was it? And both her sisters were younger than her, and already with such sizable broods. Much as she tried to hide it, it was quite galling.
She had had to learn to smile and grimace. Smile and grimace. That was the way. You accepted what God had given you. You put up with it. There were always people worse off than you. That was the thing to remember.
Or, at least, that was how you pretended you felt, and considered things to be, however different you felt inside… However different you really were…
She was dressed in a sedate, white blouse and a grey, pleated skirt. Prim and proper, as she should be. As they all thought she was.
But, then, they didn’t know, did they?
Did he know? Young Flight Lieutenant Manfred, whom she had just interviewed. Interrogated, even. Just a few minutes ago… Did he know? She suspected he did. And she suspected he’d written her the letters, especially the intimate ones. Especially those. That was why he knew.
You see, poor Freddie, her husband, had been a bit of a bounder. A sleazebag, they called it in the Hollywood films. A womanizer. A heartless so-and-so.
As a young woman, she’d dreamt of true love, and gushing romance, but had, by the time she met Freddie, resigned herself to something less.
A love which took your breath away—the love she’d fantasized over in the dormitory with other girls at her posh private school, as they lay breathlessly together on their rumpled beds—was something you forgot about as adulthood slowly but surely took over.
Anyway, Freddie had seemed a decent enough sort, from a respectable and well-placed family, and she had felt confident about her future.
He even seemed moderately exciting, a dashing fellow in the Royal Air Force who performed daring twists and turns in biplanes at the air-shows he dragged her off to see.
The only problem was that, once they were married, he’d started to make rather outrageous and unpleasant demands, which she had considered terribly indecent, and which she had, initially, refused. He’d turned to other women to satisfy his illicit cravings, the sort of women no decent man should ever mix with. When she had relented at times, and tried to satisfy his lust, it had mostly been an embarrassing and awkward affair which had left him unfulfilled, and herself feeling guilty.
He would often promise to her that he would mend his ways, and, every now and then, he would seem quite considerate and reformed… But it never lasted. He would revert to his old tricks, and demands, or end up spending night after night away from home engaged in God knows what despicable outrages.
And no children ever came.
That was the nagging, incessant, unpalatable icing on her miserable cake.
A child or two would have mitigated her sense of becalmed hopelessness, and made her marriage mildly bearable.
As the years passed, he lost his looks, and became rather plump of body, and chubby of face. As many of his generation of pilots, he grew a handle-bar moustache, and, with his raucous, silly laugh, heaving, fat belly, and cold, expressionless eyes, often made Fiona feel sick only to look at him.
She was unfulfilled. That was blindingly obvious. She’d had to buckle down to an empty, emotionless life, and not show it to anybody, neither to her aged parents—now luckily both dead—nor to her coterie of genteel acquaintances. Her life was one long round of dry, uneventful dinner-parties, garden fetes, church services and meetings, and charitable events.
You see, she was quite rich. She’d inherited The Mansion from mummy and daddy—he had been the local squire—and Freddie was under her thumb financially, if in no other sense. She was looked up to by the local people. She organized the fetes, charitable dos and meetings which were a part of the area’s social calendar.
She did it all with a gracious smile, and circumspect hands clasped together about her waist, nodding calmly and demurely at all and sundry, while, inside her, she kept the truth hidden. Inside her, her cravings hadn’t died, her dreams hadn’t vanished. Her real personality was merely concealed, not suppressed. She had to learn to keep things from other people. Otherwise she would be found out, and that would never do.
And nobody had ever managed to penetrate that protective shield she wound around herself. Around her mind and her body. That is, until her encounters with young Flight Lieutenant Manfred.
Her palpitating body, and her harsh, staccato breathing convinced herself of that. She felt sure he could see through her, and into her soul. And that might prove very dangerous. Both for him, and for her.
She even sensed that those nasty acts Freddie had always wanted her to do, and which she hated, would maybe become transformed into something ecstatically pure and gushingly romantic when performed by and upon young Matthew Manfred’s delightfu
l body.
She and Freddie had got married in 1928.
When the war broke out in 1939, she’d fondly imagined things might change between them. Momentous events might bring about momentous changes, that sort of thing.
But it wasn’t until 1940 that some strange things started to happen. Things that did totally change her life, and which led up to the crisis which now faced her.
Freddie was posted down south with his squadron, not so far from London. They were based at Tangmere, right in the thick of things when the Germans unleashed the full weight of the Luftwaffe against Britain.
Fiona stayed up in Scotland.
She and Freddie had discussed whether she should accompany him down south, but, in the end, they decided she should stay and carry on with her duties. After all, she was still, for many of the locals, Miss Fiona, eldest daughter of the old squire, the focal point of all the fairs, fetes, raffles and sundry other patriotic endeavours which were organized to raise money for our brave lads overseas, or for the construction of more and more fighter-planes.
“You’re needed up here, old thing,” Freddie would blurt out, giving her a respectful caress on her arm. “Home fires, and all that.”
She understood what he really meant. He just didn’t want her around. He didn’t want her messing up his trips to London’s tempting flesh-spots whenever he was on leave.
“Whatever you say, Freddie.”
And to be honest, she preferred it that way. Being separated for possibly months on end from him, and his sweaty body shoving at her, and grubby hands pawing at the most indelicate of places, was an anticipated delight.
It left her time to give herself up to her own private thoughts and feelings, and concentrate on what she really wanted to do. There was no longer the constant need to hide. Nor the constant fear of being found out.
It was probably guilt which made her do it. She felt she probably needed to make a nod in the direction of wifely concern. Marital empathy.
You see, she felt she should write to him. You know, the dutiful wife, pining at home, sending letters to her gallant hubby at the Front, giving him succour and courage through her devotion and loyalty.
She bitterly regretted it when he surprised her by writing back.
That was totally unexpected. She hadn’t really known he could write. Apart from signing cheques, and initialling hotel and restaurant bills.
They had never exchanged letters before. Not when they were courting, and certainly not after their marriage and its disappointments.
What had also surprised her was how nice his letters were. Considerate, responsive. Conversational. She and Freddie had never ever really talked in any proper meaning of the word. The letters got more and more heart-felt as time went on.
She assumed it was the war. The aerial dogfights he took part in over London and the south-east. The nerves and fear consequent upon combat. All that must have changed him. Made him human. Frail, needy and receptive. He suddenly saw her as a person, a lover, a proper wife. His equal. He needed her. She was the mirror in which he was reflected back. She helped define him, and vice versa. They became a proper married couple, able to relate and respond to each other.
He even wanted to talk about their sexual problems. He asked her to speak openly about her feelings. He regretted that he had shocked her, and alienated her. He asked her to go over all such matters in great detail. He sounded so contrite. He wrote that he wanted her to tell him everything, and how she had felt about his demands, his overtures, his perversions. He wanted to put everything right, so he said, and sought her forgiveness.
They were like letters from a different person. She was gobsmacked. Amazed. Spellbound. For a while she started to imagine she was falling madly in love with him. All those silly sexual fantasies of her youth returned. All those secret yearnings which she kept close to herself bubbled passionately to the surface, and irritated and aroused her. Her skin itched. Her body gasped. Her innards gave out convulsive, uncontrollable spasms.
Of course, the truth was that the letters were indeed from a different person. Or persons.
That buffoon Freddie could never have written such pearls. Such sentiments which melted her like the winter sun brushing its lips against the fresh-fallen snow. When those beautiful words were being written, he was probably screaming his silly head off at some brothel where shameless whores were performing unimaginable obscenities on his fat body.
Although she had never openly acknowledged it to herself, she had sensed it wasn’t him all along. At least, that’s how she viewed it with the benefit of hindsight.
Of course, once he was reported killed in action, it was as plain as the ever-increasing wrinkles around her eyes.
She felt a slight sadness when she opened up the telegram. Not for his death, but for the death of the letter-writer, even if at that time she hadn’t yet quite accepted that they were two different people.
She didn’t care at all that Freddie—that bloated oaf she’d known over thirteen wretched years—had been blasted out of the sky by a very considerate Nazi in his Messerschmitt 109, but she did shed a tear or two at the realization that the letters would now stop.
But that was the thing. They didn’t stop.
The letters kept coming. Even though Freddie was dead.
The first one which came she put down to the wartime delays of the postal service, even though the date on the letter wasn’t quite right.
The words in it seemed quite poignant. You know, the unsuspecting last words of a husband to his wife. A tear or two had formed in her eyes, despite the instinct within her that this was not her husband speaking to her.
Then a second letter. Then a third.
You see, she replied to each letter which arrived. She wrote to him as if he were still alive. She answered the points he made in his preceding letter, commented on this and that, called him Freddie, referred to domestic and local matters only they as a couple could know of. Or rather, only the letter-writer and she could know of and had shared in their series of letters.
Every now and then, she did get spooky, supernatural suspicions, you know, that Freddie’s spirit, sitting up there on a cloud, was communing with her from the other side. But only intermittently, and it soon passed.
She was sincerely religious and all that. C of E. Church of England. She believed in everything which went with that. The fetes, the bazaars, the charity events, the afternoon teas with the vicar and the church committee. The requirement to behave morally and correctly. Decorum in all matters. That sort of religion. Good, solid, unemotional, middle-class religion. A way of life really, rather than having much to do with God.
She had never had any pretensions to be an intellectual, and natter on about religion, or even politics. Her ‘set’ weren’t interested in politics at all, although she did know some people who knew Nancy Mitford and Oswald Mosley.
So, she carried on writing back to the writer of those wonderful, romantic letters, clutching each page in her shaking hand as she devoured his words, all the time her other hand edging towards her lower torso, to rest there like the hand of another person on her body, and ease her ache.
Obviously, the person—or persons—writing to her did not know Freddie had been killed in action. For whatever reason he had started writing to her, and had pretended to be her husband, he could only be carrying on that subterfuge because he was ignorant about poor Freddie’s ascent to the heavens.
Therefore, if he had been in Freddie’s squadron—and Fiona was quite sure of that—then he had been transferred somewhere else before Freddie’s demise, and hadn’t heard about it yet.
Or, of course, Freddie had been transferred, and had not told her.
Fiona instinctively realized she had to be careful. She had realized this almost immediately the letters had started, even when she wasn’t sure if it was her husband or not.
Otherwise, she might get found out.
The writer had asked her, shortly after the letters had commen
ced, not to address the letters directly to Flight Lieutenant Freddie MacIntosh, but to a P.O. Box. 54 was the number. Fiona had found it a bit odd, naturally, but Freddie—rather, the person pretending to be Freddie—had made it sound terribly romantic.
“Let’s keep our letters secret, my darling. A bit anonymous. The others will only rib me about all the letters I get. They’ll say I’m under your thumb. A big baby. You know what chaps are like. I’ll collect the letters from the local post office. They’ll be our secret. Away from prying eyes.”
She had acquiesced, of course.
She had sensed it wasn’t Freddie. Obviously, the letter-writer had to hide his correspondence. Keep it from prying eyes. Keep it from Freddie himself.
The letters stopped a month or so after Freddie’s death.
Either the writer finally heard the news, or he got a bit suspicious about Fiona’s replies.
She had to cover herself, you see.
She’d asked a few pertinent questions every now and then.
“Are you still based at Tangmere, Freddie?”
“I know you can’t tell me where, Freddie, but have you been posted elsewhere?”
“Are your old mates still with you?”
“When’s your next leave?”
“It would be great to meet up in London, Freddie…”
“Are you coming home on leave soon to Scotland, Freddie?”
The writer didn’t answer her questions. He kept things vague. He spoke about his feelings. His immediate surroundings. The airfield. What he saw. His line of vision as he waited for the call to scramble, rush to his Spitfire and take off to do battle with the Germans. How he felt as he took off, not knowing if he would ever return. And see her again. How he felt about her. What things would be like after the war. How he lay in bed at night thinking of her. And her body.
She sent a couple of terse letters at the end asking why he had stopped writing, not expecting an answer.
There wasn’t one.
So, she stopped as well. Albeit with immense sadness.
Her letter-writing sessions, sitting primly in her white blouse and pleated skirt at the writing-desk in the study, or more intimately curled up on the sofa, or, often, in bed, had become the point of her existence. That, and breathlessly ripping open envelopes to devour his replies over and over again as she paced about the drawing-room, or tossed and turned in her bed.
